Woodpecker Q & A: "Why do woodpeckers make noise by pecking on gutters?" The noise making is called "drumming" and it's a way males declare territory and advertise for females. Drumming has nothing to do with searching for food, so male woodpeckers select the best surface available -- the louder the better.

What if your gutter has become the neighborhood woodpecker telegraph service? Drumming is most noticeable during spring courtship and ends when a territory is secure and the male attracts a female. Just hope your woodpecker has lots of sex appeal.

"How many woodpeckers do we have in Florida?" In the woods of St. Johns County you'll find pileated (the largest), red-bellied (most common in yards), red-headed (avoids urban set- tings), hairy, down- y (the smallest), yellow-bellied sapsucker, and the northern flicker -- seven woodpeckers in all.

The red-cockaded wood- pecker won't be found in your backyard. It's endangered because it needs old-growth pine forests, a rapidly diminishing habitat.

All woodpeckers are insect eaters but most also dine on berries and nuts. The northern flicker, for example, hunts ants on the ground (45 percent of its diet) but will come to your feeder for fruit, berries and nuts.

"Do woodpeckers kill trees? I have some dead trees in my yard riddled with woodpecker holes." Woodpeckers don't kill trees -- the insects they are after kill trees. Woodpeckers have acute hearing and detect wood-boring insects and rot beneath the surface of a tree long before any tree surgeon. One woodpecker strategy is to drum lightly on a tree without breaking the surface -- the sound tells volumes about the health of the tree.

Horizontal rows of small holes on the trunk of a tree mean you've got a yellow-bellied sapsucker. It's not directly digging for insects but returns to the shallow holes to check for sap and the insects it attracts. Titmice, nuthatches, and hummingbirds take advantage of the sapsucker's talent and help themselves to sap. No, the holes don't harm the tree.

Most woodpecker nest cavities are created in tree limbs already dying from some kind of tree rot. If the limb is not threatening house or garage, leave it for woodpeckers and their successors, screech owls.